


Pruddy's Inn

by littlealex



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-12-29
Updated: 2002-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:11:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlealex/pseuds/littlealex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pansy and Remus meet monthly at Pruddy's Inn, in a small town affectionately named Exit 4 2/3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pruddy's Inn

Pruddy's Inn lies in a small town whose name has long been forgotten by the postal service, but is appropriately nicknamed Exit 4 2/3, for its main road is a dirt track leading from the main highway between Crieff and Aberfeldy. The town consists of a general store, Pruddy's, and a souvenir shop, each with residential houses behind them. Exit 4 2/3 doesn't often get visitors, but Pruddy's Inn usually has some form of traveller frequenting it. Backpackers or curious drivers occasionally follow the dirt road, and end up at Pruddy's.

Through all its years as the local watering hole and meeting house, Pruddy's has only ever had one regular couple come to visit it. They started coming to Pruddy's in the summer of 1998, and have come back every month since then. They never arrive together, only separately, and always seem to walk into town without a car or a backpack or anything. The inhabitants of Exit 4 2/3 spend much of their time speculating over this, but they rarely come up with anything more logical than "it must be magic," which is immediately refuted.

This particular month - March 2000 - the woman turns up first. She was eighteen when she first came to Exit 4 2/3, and she is still as beautiful as the day she first walked into Pruddy's. Her hair is a dark, burnt orange color, her eyes deep pools of brown, and during the school year she turns up in a school uniform. She tells the innkeeper at Pruddy's that her name is Logan O'Berg, but her real name is Pansy Parkinson. She gets the key from the innkeeper, orders two Mixed Blessings at the bar, and retreats to her and her companion's usual room.

The man appears on the outskirts of town nearly half an hour after Pansy, and the innkeeper nods at him as he quietly enters Pruddy's and hurries upstairs to the room. He's a nervous fellow whom many of the men of Exit 4 2/3 feel doesn't deserve Pansy. He is nearly twenty-two years her senior, with tawny brown hair and bright amber eyes. His clothes are usually tattered, patched here and there with odd bits of fabric, and he looks like he has stepped out of the 1940s. The townspeople have speculated on how old he is, but they rarely guess correctly, as the furrows in his brow and the lines on his face make him look about ten years older.

Remus Lupin stands in front of the door for a moment, smoothing his hair and clothes. He's always hesitant before entering the room, because he knows what's coming. Pansy has had a hold over him for four years now, ever since she was sixteen, and he was her teacher. He doesn't know how he got himself in this position exactly, but he would now never give it up. He knocks on the door, and Pansy answers it moments later, pulling the door open a fraction and then retreating into the room. Remus sighs to himself and pushes the door open and walks into the room, closing the door behind him.

Pansy is sitting on the corner of the bed, her legs spread despite her skirt, and she looks up at Remus as he takes a seat across from her. Remus looks over at her and offers her a weak smile. He gains no strength by being in Pansy's presence, and receives an extra pang of nerves when she smiles salaciously at him.

"How are you faring, Remus?" she asks, sipping at her drink.

Remus idly picks at his cuticles, a nervous habit designed to keep his hands occupied. "Well, thank you," he replies, his throat dry. "I trust that things in Dublin are well."

"Yes, thank you," she replies, nodding once.

"Do you ever miss your family?" Remus asked after a brief and awkward pause.

Pansy snorts derisively and takes another sip of her drink. "Hardly. For my birthday last week, they disinherited me. Oh, and thank you for the owl; it was very sweet."

"Don't mention it." As the silence stretches between them, Pansy finishes her drink and stands up from the bed to place her glass on the small table beside Remus.

"How's Hogwarts?" Pansy breaks the silence, standing next to Remus' chair. He shrugs and stares at her long legs. Pansy's beauty is flawless to most, but he can trace every Quidditch scar on her body with his eyes closed.

"The disappearances are frightening people, but Dumbledore is keeping the peace." He looks up at her, and she nods curtly. And thus the conversation ends. The pretense of conversation, whether convincing or not, is there as a matter of habit, not of any real interest the one harbors for the other. Old habits die hard.

Pansy turns and unbuttons her shirt, taking slow, deliberate strides towards the bed. She casts the article of clothing aside, revealing a smooth, bare back. Remus averts his eyes as Pansy continues to remove her clothes, and looks at his full glass of spirits. Pansy's skirt drops to the floor and he takes hold of the glass, drinking its contents in one large gulp.

He then stands and turns to Pansy, who is kneeling on the bed with her hands by her sides with an expectant look on her face. He feels the familiar heat inside him bunch up and travel quickly to his groin, suddenly feeling overdressed for a cool spring evening. He sometimes wonders whether his near-instant erection is a product of an attraction to Pansy or some ingrained, habitual anticipation that has been cultivated for four years. He doesn't know the answer any more, and he rarely entertains the question seriously.

He unbuttons his shirt as quickly as he can, cursing the awful Muggle invention, and takes a few steps towards Pansy. He kicks his shoes off and goes for his socks in quick succession while Pansy sighs and stretches languidly. The knot of anticipation leaps to his throat and he swallows it; she doesn't notice and merely continues to stretch, pulling skin taut over breasts, ribs and hips.

Nerves, anticipation and lust make it nearly impossible for Remus to unbuckle his own belt; by the time he does, Pansy is so fed up that she grabs his trousers, unbuttons them, and pulls them down over his hips, along with his underwear. "There," she says simply, her gaze lingering on Remus' erection as she disposes of his trousers.

Her eyes travel up his scarred torso to a large, pink mark that spreads across his chest from the bottom of his breastbone to his collarbone. She looks at his eyes for a moment before leaning forward and licking a hot, wet trail across the imperfection. Her hands find his sides and she pulls him closer as her tongue travels upwards, pulling a breath from Remus' lungs with its skill.

Pansy stops at the base of his neck and moves back, her eyes cast downward. The swift absence of heat draws Remus to her as she lies back on the bed, and in a moment, he is hovering above her. He looks down at her as she shifts beneath him, but she can't see him through her shut eyelids. He knows why she's not looking at him, because it is for exactly the same reason that he shuts his eyes and presses an aggressive mouth to hers.

Teeth clatter against one another, lips are bruised and bleeding, and Pansy grabs Remus' erection a little forcefully, pulling their mouths apart and ripping a moan from him. "Now," she orders breathlessly, her eyes still shut tightly. Her hand is replaced with his and she slides down a little, lifting her legs without thinking. Remus does as he's told and slides into her with barely a glance at what he's doing. Pansy takes in a sharp breath through her teeth, which quickly dissolves into a moan as Remus, his eyes shut as tightly as hers, begins to move inside of her. They find their rhythm quickly, as the years of practice has given them chance enough to become used to one another, and the movement of one seems to melt naturally into the movement of the other.

"Tell me you want me," Pansy murmurs, fingernails scratching over scarred flesh.

"I... I want..."

"Never mind," she cuts him off before he can finish his sentence and grabs his wrist. "Just touch me instead." She removes Remus' hand from the bed and places it on her breast, losing herself in sensation.

Their orgasms come crashing over them at once, release coming in the form of a deep, inhuman guttural noise from Remus and a sated-sounding moan from Pansy. Pansy's legs disentangle themselves from around Remus' shoulder and arm, and Remus collapses on top of her, unable to support his own weight. She sighs contentedly and threads her fingers through his hair, her eyes still shut firmly against reality. _What good is reality_ , she muses, _if I can just pretend to get what I want?_

She falls asleep easily, but Remus' eyes are wide open by this point. The simple wretchedness of their arrangement always comes crashing upon him soon after climax. He knows they are both in love with other people: she, with a man who will never want her; he, with a man he can never have. He knows that Pansy's love for Draco Malfoy, her high school "sweetheart", never ended, despite his involvement with another. His own love for his friend, comrade and confidante, Sirius Black, survived even death.

The emptiness and loneliness left when these people were no longer there, and the desire for them back, is the only driving force in Remus and Pansy's relationship. A common misery, the right circumstances, and opportune timing brought them together in the beginning, and continues to draw them to one another every month.

Disgusted with himself, Remus disentangles himself from Pansy and rummages through his clothes on the floor for his wand. He cleans himself up and pulls on his clothes, once again cursing the tiny buttons on his shirt, and then looks over at Pansy. Her limbs are draped haphazardly over the bed, her legs spread in a terribly unladylike manner; her cheeks are flushed and there is a hint of blood still on her lower lip. Remus casts a cleaning charm on her as well, and then moves to the bed.

"Come on, darling, get under the covers," he whispers to her, kissing her on the forehead. She murmurs something that sounds distinctly like 'Love you, Draco,' and abides by Remus' gentle touch. Remus pulls the covers up to her chin and smoothes her hair over her head, smiling wryly to himself. "I hope you get everything you want out of life."

He leaves with one quiet sound, and the owners of Pruddy's Inn have never figured out how he gets past their keen ears and light-sleeping watchdog.


End file.
